1949: When a little girl’s 'miracle' became a Holy Week sensation worldwide

The strongest earthquake in more than 130 years rattled the Pacific Northwest, killing eight on April 13, 1949.

That same day in In Washington, the House approved the largest peacetime military bill in history, while in Albany, Gov. Thomas Dewey signed a employee disability insurance bill.

In Syracuse, the city’s NBA franchise, the Nats, were eliminated from the playoffs by the Anderson Packers.

But most of the city’s attention was focused elsewhere.

It was Holy Week, and many were sure that a religious miracle had occurred at the house at 511 Hawley Ave.

Soon, thousands were crowding around the home’s front porch hoping to catch a glimpse of an 11-year-old girl and her weeping statue.

And so the story begins

The Post-Standard, April 14, 1949

And so the story begins

The story of how a little Syracuse girl became caught up in an international media firestorm began after a routine household accident.

On April 3, 1949, while cleaning her home, Viola Martin, a divorced mother of four, placed a 2-foot tall plaster statue of St. Anne, the mother of Mary, onto to a windowsill. It fell outside and struck a rock, smashing into pieces. The statue left a small cross on the rock.

Somehow, the head of the statue remained intact, suffering only a small scratch on its nose, and landed in the driveway.

Shirley Anne, 11, the oldest of the children, and described as “very religious,” found the head while playing and gave the statue a kiss.

"When you're Roman Catholic, you're trained to kiss something like that if it falls," she told the Post-Standard’s Dick Case in 1999.

The head, she said, began to weep tears. She went to tell her mother.

“At first, I didn’t pay any attention to her because I was busy with my housework,” her mother said. “But Shirley insisted.”

When her mother saw the teardrops, she was shocked.

“I didn’t know what to make of it,” she said. “I was even afraid at first to say anything because people might not believe it. But it happens every time.”

The devout Catholic family finally decided to share what they had seen.

On April 12, 1949, the Tuesday of Holy Week, Shirley and the statue’s head went to Our Lady of Pompeii Church.

Brought before three priests, nuns and altar boys, 20 people in all, the statue wept when Shirley kissed it.

The priests were stunned and could not explain what they were seeing.

“I can only say that it’s a wonderful, extraordinary occurrence,” one said.

April 13, 1949: ‘It doesn’t seem probable’

The Post-Standard, April14, 1949

April 13, 1949: ‘It doesn’t seem probable’

News of what had happened began to leak out, and by the evening of April 13, the neighborhood around the two-story home on Hawley Ave. was in a frenzy.

Crowds of people became so thick that Syracuse police were sent out to handle the traffic.

By 9:30 p.m. all available parking spaces in the area were taken and the Post-Standard reported that “the Martin home was thronged with Syracusans who had come to witness the phenomenon.”

The Post-Standard was there first and witnessed the miracle first hand:

“Shirley Anne lightly touches her lips to the forehead, then holds the head away from her. In a moment, the dull plaster finish begins to glisten at the corner of one eye. The glistening spots spread, and touching them leave no doubt, that they are watery, tear-like liquid. If the tears are wiped away, they reappear when Shirley Anne again kisses the statue.”

Herman Borzner, the paper’s chief photographer, who called himself a “pretty skeptical guy,” said he “wouldn’t begin to explain it, but I saw water appear in the crevice between the eye and the nose on one side of the face.”

Another skeptic was Dean John McMahon of the State School of Ceramics at Alfred University.

“It doesn’t seem probable,” McMahon said, explaining that plaster of Paris does absorb water, but does not release it except through evaporation.

April 14, 1949: World-wide attention

Copyright 2006 Heritage Microfilm

April 14, 1949: World-wide attention

The story of the 11-year-old girl and her weeping statue on Hawley Avenue was now front-page news and the Martin family tried to take control of the circus that was sweeping around them.

Crowds began showing up at the family’s front porch shortly after the morning’s Post-Standard was delivered.

Shirley’s father, Arthur, a Syracuse milkman, drove the girl away early in the morning in his truck, dropping her off at a relative’s house.

A sign, written in blue crayon on wrapping paper, was hung on the front door of the house, reading:

“The little girl is not here. She will be back this afternoon.”

But the crowds of the faithful, curious and skeptical only increased throughout the morning and early afternoon.

Their patience was rewarded at around 2 p.m., when Shirley Anne returned home.

She stood on the porch, kissed the head of St. Anne and two watery spots appeared. Many in the crowd began praying.

Shirley Anne went inside but the crowds remained, some estimates said they had grown to about 3,000 people.

They became so large that police had to reroute traffic away from the block and buses had to change their routes.

Throughout the afternoon, the crowds requested Shirley Anne come back out. She always did. She would later years later that her lips became dry and cracked from constantly kissing the chalky statue head.

Viola Martin, Shirley’s mother, despite being skeptical at first, became something of a tour guide for believers who streamed into her kitchen, encouraging her daughter to show strangers her gift. She would capture a tear on a handkerchief and mail it with a religious medal to the "hundreds" of people who wrote the little girl.

"People were taking Shirl's clothing, shingles off the house, dirt from the driveway,” her sister Beverly would remember.

Her story was recorded for national television networks. She made her national TV debut that night with WSYR’s Fred Hillegas which was “cut into” NBC’s nightly roundup of national news.

That evening, she was taken to the television studios of WHEN where she performed her miracle in front of television cameras.

When the tears appeared, they were visible on the television screen for people at home.

The story was now international news and the Post-Standard said that Syracuse was “a center of world-wide attention.”

Fox Movietone News and Life Magazine were on their way to cover the story and a country-western song, “The Tears of St. Anne,” was written.

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April 15, 1949: ‘I don’t want it to cry’

Good Friday arrives, and alas, this is the day the tears stopped flowing from Shirley Anne Martin’s statue when she displayed the head to reporters and newsreel cameras.

The little girl was almost relieved.

Mario Rossi, who had visited with the girl throughout, said he saw changes in her. She was no longer the “tired, somber-faced girl who attracted global attention,” she was now “gay, lively,” broke into songs and was full of pep.”

“I’m glad,” she said when asked why she thought the statue did not cry anymore. “Maybe St. Anne has stopped crying because it’s nearly the end of Holy Week; I don’t think she feels bad anymore.”

“I don’t want it to cry,” she continued. “You wouldn’t want a human being to cry, would you?”

Her mother blamed the television appearance the night before, saying, “It just shows God don’t want you to advertise.”

Her father was also relieved that the ordeal might be over:

“What we’re getting out of this isn’t worth it. We are just worrying about our little girl. She looks sick. She can’t sleep.”

That night, she again appeared on WHEN television to prove that the statue had stopped crying.

Word that the miracle had stopped spread, and the crowds in front of the Martin home shrunk to just a handful, including a blind man from Connecticut, hoping to be healed.

“We don’t claim to be healers,” Mrs. Martin told a reporter.

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April 16, 1949: A fervent appeal

The tears returned the day before Easter, and the family was not exactly thrilled.

They made a fervent appeal to the public to refrain from plaguing them with requests after news leaked that the tears had again started again that day.

Mario Rossi and WHEN’s Edward Ryan were invited into the home and witnessed the miracle again but were told that the family was reluctant to comment further, for fear that the crowds of people would again appear outside their doors.

Shirley Anne’s parents were becoming more and more concerned about their daughter’s health and well-being.

“We don’t know why this happens or how,” Mrs. Martin said. “We don’t know if it will happen again, but we do know there won’t by anymore public appearances by Shirley Anne.”